Search found 1 match: Andrew Dominik

"Jesse James…I love that movie. I think it’s a great film. It made my life very difficult afterwards, because it was very difficult to get another project started. You know, I had all these other projects I wanted to do, but everyone told me I had to make this little heist movie, and that’s what I did. If I was going to make it, I was going to do it my way, which was my feeling behind it. I was going to make a shorter film and one with a little more plot – that kind of stuff, you know? At the same time, despite all my best efforts to make a commercial picture, I’m not really sure I’ve succeeded. We’ll find out." - andrew dominik

in other words, he's tried his best to appease studio requirements with a stylish genre homage, but he's so pissed about being forced into a corner that he can't resist taking a few giant shits in the face of those requirements, mostly in the form of bitter irony (...jesse james was too subtle and inaccessible for ya, huh? try THIS, fuckers!) or the most basic brand of jaded, deglamorised introspection.

it's the vision of a filmmaker being censored under protest, resorting to sledgehammer analogies and pop-cynicism (USA MORE LIKE U$A AM I RIGHT???????????? <cue "america, fuck yeah!" playing in the background>) as a way of making something that's both fashionable and a no-bullshit indictment of the system making it fashionable. i can sympathise, especially given just how wonderfully ...jesse james continues to hold up, but in the year where this is not a film demonstrated how the frustration and righteous indignation of a caged filmmaker can be channeled toward all manner of creative and poetic ends, this comes across as a bit of a spineless, blockheaded tantrum.